Another Pass at Revitalizing Abandoned Warehouse Space on the Waterfront

The seven adjoining buildings on the East River in Brooklyn called Empire Stores were a mercantile hub in the 19th century.Credit
Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Even in their name, Empire Stores, the seven adjoining red-brick warehouses on the East River conjure the mercantile might and reach of the City of Brooklyn in the 19th century. Through their arched openings passed coffee, sugar, molasses and hides from Africa, South America and the Caribbean.

No wonder, then, that almost every plan to rehabilitate the area around the Brooklyn Bridge since the 1970s has included the Empire Stores, in the Fulton Ferry Historic District, as a centerpiece.

They were to be part of an artists’ colony or a museum. Or maybe something like Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco or Faneuil Hall in Boston. Ideas came. Ideas went. Developers were designated and de-designated.

Between 1978, when the abandoned buildings were acquired by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and 2010, when they were transferred to the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the only major structural work involved replacing the roof and shoring up a corner that had begun to settle disturbingly.

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A redevelopment plan would transform the contiguous buildings as a single complex with 300,000 square feet of office space and 80,000 square feet of shops, restaurants and event space.Credit
Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Meanwhile, the waterfront and the nearby Dumbo district had come back to life. “People were looking for the Empire Stores to lead the way for Dumbo,” David Lowin, a vice president of the park, said. “Now it’s a hole in the doughnut. It’s a barrier.”

Putting a hopeful face on decades of delay at the Empire Stores, Regina Myer, the president of the park, said, “This is going to be the best project it could have been.”

By that, she meant that the transformation contemplated by the development team that was designated this month, led by Joe Cayre of Midtown Equities, would answer real needs, not hypothetical ones, by serving park visitors, neighbors and office workers.

Midtown Equities would lease the site for 96 years and reconstruct the contiguous buildings as a single complex with 300,000 square feet of office space and 80,000 square feet of shops, restaurants and event space. The West Elm home furnishings company is to lease both office and retail space, the developers said.

For the public, there would be a landscaped open space of about 7,000 square feet on the rooftop and a 3,000-square-foot exhibition area, possibly curated by the Brooklyn Historical Society. “New York’s relationship to the economy around sugar and coffee is incredibly important,” Deborah Schwartz, the president of the society, said. “It’s tied into political perspectives surrounding slavery. It’s not a small story to be told.”

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A rendering shows a plan for the Empire Stores.Credit
Studio V

“You’re talking about history in the place where this history happened,” she added.

Midtown Equities will pay rent of about $1.5 million in the first year, escalating annually thereafter. The money will go into the operating and maintenance budgets of the park, which is supposed to be financially self-sustaining, under the terms of its establishment in 2002.

To forge a commercially useful space, Jay Valgora of Studio V, the architects for Midtown Equities, proposes to perforate the party walls between the warehouses with dozens of openings.

Though the Empire Stores look like one building, they are actually discrete structures, 45 to 75 feet wide, separated by solid walls of irregularly coursed schist. These walls are so beautiful — the stone is surprisingly colorful and the quartz deposits sparkle — that Mr. Valgora plans to reveal large expanses of them.

He would carve out an open-air courtyard in the center of the complex, through which visitors could pass from Water Street to the East River. And he has designed a 60,000-square-foot, glass-walled rooftop addition, one to two stories high.

Historical features like the large iron hoisting wheels on the upper floors and the crisscross chutes down which coffee bags went sliding to the ground floor would be preserved. Some would be kept in place. Others would be relocated to public areas. Mummified beans that still litter the floors — recalling Berenice Abbott’s 1936 photograph of the buildings as a Yuban warehouse — would probably not be roasted.

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Jay Valgora of Studio V, the architects for Midtown Equities. After decades of delay, the city plans to add shops where sugar and coffee once passed through.Credit
Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

On the facade, Mr. Valgora envisions repairing or replicating the iron shutters, conserving the star-shaped tie-rod anchors and preserving the remnants of painted advertising. “We don’t want to take away the aging,” he said. “We want to restore the patina.”

Still, he acknowledged the paradox in the Empire Stores’ having survived so long intact only to face such a radical internal transformation. “These buildings were not meant for human habitation,” he explained. “They were meant to keep coffee beans cool and dark.”

The New York Landmarks Conservancy had a chance to look at his plans last week. After meeting with Mr. Valgora, Peg Breen, the conservancy president, said, “We appreciate the care he’s taking with the restoration of the facade.”

“But we do think he’s making too many large openings in the schist walls,” Ms. Breen said. “We also think the two-story addition is a bit overwhelming.”

“These poor buildings,” she said. “Everybody wanted to see them restored and reused. Now we’re at this point and we want them to do it respectfully.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 26, 2013, on page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: Another Pass at Revitalizing Abandoned Warehouse Space on the Waterfront. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe